1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed and claimed herein pertains generally to crowdsourcing, wherein a number of software service providers are each engaged online to perform a specified development or other task. More particularly, the invention pertains to crowdsourcing of the above type, wherein a computing environment, comprising all tools and other resources required to perform the task, is made available to each task participant.
2. Description of Related Art
As is known by those of skill in the art, Web 2.0 Technologies have significantly enhanced interactive information sharing and collaboration over the Internet. This has enabled crowdsourcing to develop, as an increasingly popular approach for performing certain kinds of important tasks. In crowdsourcing, a large group of organizations, individuals, and other entities that desire to provide pertinent services, such as a specific community of providers or the general public, are invited to participate in a task that is presented by a task requester. Examples of such tasks include, but are not limited to, developing specified software components or the like.
At present, a crowdsourcing platform may serve as a broker or intermediary between the task requester and software providers who are interested in undertaking or participating in task performance. Crowdsourcing platforms generally allow requesters to publish their challenges and tasks, and further allow participating providers that are successful in completing the task to receive specified monetary awards or other incentives. Top Coder and Mechanical Turk are examples of currently available platforms.
For tasks that require development of a software component or other product, the requester will typically specify the particular types of tools and other resources that each participant must use, in order to perform the task successfully. These specified tools and resources collectively comprise or define the development environment for the component. Also, if the task requires testing of the developed component, particular tools and other resources may also be specified for carrying out the test procedures. These specified tool and resource requirements collectively define the test environment for the component.
While specified development and test environments are clearly necessary, such requirements often act to limit or restrict those who can participate in a crowdsourcing task. If an individual or organization that desires to participate in performing the task has access to the development and test environments, there would, of course, be no problem. However, those without access would face a barrier that generally would prevent their participation, as well as quality of the submission. In the absence of a common environment, the participants would not all be working on the same baseline. As a result, the number of available participants for the crowdsourcing task could be significantly reduced.